Mr Constantine's opinion

Which of course begs the question 'What will I do when the smoking ban takes effect?'

Reasons why my credit card bill is always so big part 103: Marvel Civil War

OK, let me approach this one assume you don't know much about comic books.

In the comic book publishing world there are two big hitters: DC Comics and Marvel. DC Comics are where you will find all the really big hitters: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman etc, they also have a couple of subdivisions: Vertigo & Wildstorm.

Vertigo release a lot of very adult comic books (for example Hellblazer and Y: The Last Man), a whole bunch of Grant Morrison's work such as Doom Patrol and The Invisibles which both require a bit of extra effort from the reader to really appreciate thoroughly - a background in the Dadaism and the works of the Marquis de Sade help with with those two for example, and then this is Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan - a book about the future which slowly and quite worryingly appears to be becoming true.

Wildstorm, well I'm not sure about Wildstorm. The books here seem to inhabit a middle ground between the famous superheroes of the DC Comic Universe, and the more adult material found in Vertigo books: Stormwatch, The Authority and Planetary are the only ones I have really followed - although they all have an annoying habit of hinting at really big story lines that sort of fizzle out. Sort of like what happened to the X-files...

Anyway, back to Marvel. The comic book heroes of the Marvel universe are going to be very familiar as they all seem to be making it into films nowadays: The X-men, The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Daredevil, The Punisher etc... and then there are others who aren't in any modern films (yet!) but whom you may have heard of: Captain America, Iron Man, Thor.

Now Marvel can be split into two main streams, they have their Ultimate releases (Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four, The Ultimates to name a few) and then they have everything else... The Ultimate stream of their comic books represent a modern update to all of there most famous characters starting from scratch, basically if you buy something like Ultimate Fantastic Four Volume 1 you are going to get a retelling of their origin story, but set in a modern setting without having to worry about any convoluted history that may exist in the regular Fantastic Four comics. The Ultimate range also allows writers to make potentially controversial changes to characters which they wouldn't be allowed to do in the regular Marvel universe, for example Colossus from the X-men is openly gay, Nick Fury is black, that sort of thing.

So, back to the regular Marvel world...

Marvel are really fond of crossover story lines which effect the whole super hero community. Recently we've had Avengers Disassembled (which dealt with The Avengers having a really bad time due to Magneto's daughter, The Scarlet Witch, having a nervous breakdown), House of M (after effects of our favorite reality altering female superhero's nervous breakdown where she recreates the world with the Mutants in charge), and Decimation (you know who has another hissy fit which de-powers pretty much all of the mutants).

The latest and clearly the most far reaching crossover is the new Civil War storyline.


The basic premise revolves around the United States introducing The Superhuman Registration Act which forces anyone in a mask or with a power to register with the government, submit to official training and more importantly reveal there identity. This occurs after a tragic incident where a battle involving a young, naive, media-savvy superhero team which results in the deaths of hundreds of children after a school is destroyed by a villain called Nitro.

The act splits the superhero community down the middle. On one side is a group apposed to government intervention lead by the unlikely figurehead of Captain America, and on the other side are those who agree with the government's proposals lead by Mr Zero Tolerance aka Iron Man.

What makes Civil War interesting to readers not just interested in the mother of all superhero rumbles are the clear political references to what is currently happening to civil rights in America. The way that unregistered heroes are hunted down and sent to the Negative Zone without trial or hope of release has a clear parallel to Guantanamo Bay, the way that one company profits from clearing up after the big superhero fights is very similar to some of the war profiteering in Iraq, the way the registration act is steam-rolled into law, that sort of thing...

Incidentally one major character missing from the Civil War arc is The Hulk, apparently he got exiled into space by some of the main supporters of the Registration Act, but he's coming back... and apparently coming back really pissed.

Anyway, I'm enjoying it. It's an interesting read, one cool thing about it being a cross over event is the books don't necessarily need to be read in a linear order, parts of the story are told multiple times from different angles - you just don't get that in most other forms of story telling.

The bad thing about it is it is costing me a fortune! I've got 17 of the related books so far and according to my Amazon Wish List there are many more to come!

It is always half empty...

The Nintendo Wii has got this strange section in it called the 'Everybody Votes Channel', you don't do much with it. Basically every few days a new question is asked, and well, it does exactly what it says on the tin: everybody votes.

Nintendo are obviously up to something, I'm confident that one day there will be a question along the lines of "would you be willing to take up arms and join a glorious revolution where we will overturn the bourgeoisie government and replace it with a system based on the enlightened teachings of Mario?"

After you've voted a few times and also had a go at predicting the majority's' votes it will tell you "how tuned in you are". I'm apparently quite good at personality. I'm guessing that means I'm quite good at predicting the results for votes which ascertain other people's personality rather than a comment on my own - as I'm sure my personality no way deserves a high score - as it sucks...

It also tells me I'm 8.2m away from 'popular opinion', for some reason I find that strangely comforting.

Fear and Loathing in Richmond

John's birthday celebrations took place in Richmond this year, you can see all of the pictures by clicking here, can't quite remember why there was a silly hat involved...

*** EDIT ***
Some more pictures here.

More than meets the eye

Holy crap! Have you seen the Transformers trailer? I do believe they may actually do this film some justice.


Speaking of films, I went to see 28 Weeks Later tonight. There really needs to be an Oscar for 'best use of a helicopter to mow down a field of rampaging zombies', the film also confirms my thoughts regarding what is the best thing to do during a zombie apocalypse*:

Shoot the kids, it's always their fault.

And if that isn't a sentence that could get me in deep trouble I'd like to see a better one.

*Or an 'everybody is infected with a virus which makes them behave an awful lot like zombies' apocalypse, if you want to be pedantic

I can manage on 4 hours sleep just fine...*clunk* *snore*

If I could have one wish at the moment I think I'd skip over the obvious ones. You know: to win the lottery, to find happiness in the arms of a beautiful woman, laser beam eyes so I could destroy my enemies like the maggots that they are!

No, my wish would be to be able to sleep for 8 hours, in a row, without the need to get blind drunk, and to be able to wake up refreshed and ready to face the world - it must be just peachy to be able to do that.

I seriously can't remember the last time I had a continuous nights sleep (discounting any alcohol induced comas obviously). I either wake up after about an hour of going to sleep in a bit of a blind panic which I'm putting down to stress, or I'll wake up at 4am or just after 5am with horrible cramp in my foot.

I can just about handle waking up after 5am, by the time the painkillers have kicked in it will be around 6am which is sort of a reasonable time to start getting ready for work. The 4am wake up call is more problematic; with this one I spend an hour getting rid of the cramp (or whatever the hell it is, I'm leaning towards it being a voodoo curse of some sort), then fall back to sleep around 5am, and inevitably end up waking up around about 9am, just in time to realise I'm going to be horribly late for work, which is a great way to start the day let me tell you.

Anyway, just wanted to get that out of my system. You never know, maybe it will have some psychological effect and because I've started talking about one of my many, many problems it will magically go away...

:-|

A little bit of rockabilly

My flickr account is seeing a bit more activity nowadays, the last update seems to mainly revolve around people pretending to punch each other. You can always see the latest pictures in the top right corner, but I've posted more than nine today so I thought I'd mention there are a few more to see today.

Anyhoo, I've got a tune for you to listen to. As mentioned in the comments to the last post I've been listening to the new Two Lone Swordsmen album from Andrew Weatherall and chums. It's a bit of a strange one, Weatheralls' albums are generally a pretty eclectic collection but I'll be honest I didn't see him doing a rockabilly album. Admittedly it's rockabilly via a hint of post-punk, but none the less the twangy guitars and slap along bass line are all present and correct. See what you think:

Two Lone Swordsmen - No Girl In My Plan

btw - I got this from emusic, I'm not sure if the CD is out just yet

Portents

This fell out of my work bag today...

I'm sure the universe is trying to tell me something. It's either:

1. You're never going to give up smoking with a silly so-called hypnosis CD, or...
   
2. Keep on Smoking cigarette boy!

Note: the plan is to give up during June in time for the big extinguish in July. I alienate myself enough as it is, I don't need the added shame of skulking outside pubs smoking stinky fags whilst everyone is having social lives inside...